


anything that can go wrong

by bwyn, Yuisaki



Series: rings, dimes, and toys [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Murphy's Law, the most relevant tag yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 13:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12343770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwyn/pseuds/bwyn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuisaki/pseuds/Yuisaki
Summary: “Now you’re dead three months later,” Shiro says calmly, “because your plastic bag carrying your milk snapped. Milk led to your death. That’s Murphy’s Law.”A kid whose name Shiro can’t recall—something like Devin, or Kevin, or Pevin—raises his hand. “Uh, sir?”Shiro waves Devin-Kevin-Pevin down. “I’ve told you, Shiro’s fine. What is it?”“...What… What’s any of this got to do with physics?”***In which Lance witnesses Murphy's Law in action—by experiencing it.





	anything that can go wrong

**Author's Note:**

> hello there, fancy meeting you here in............... _society_.  
>  sO HEY, it's me. bwyn. back from birdland. fingers, ravaged from woodpeckers and owls and chickadees, ready to type. yui dumped posting this next bit to me since i, uh, didn't help with the last one ha _ha_.
> 
> enjoy, sweet babs.

“Murphy’s Law is the idea that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. If there is a potential for things to go badly, it will happen.”

Shiro takes a moment to flip the slide, where Matt—or if not Matt, the spirit of the wretched Nevaeh, the Twenty-Sixth Squirrel—has managed to hack into his slides to change the font of the title from the sleek, black, 24-size Georgia to a hot pink in something like 80-size Comic Sans.

Murphy’s Law, indeed.

He ignores the outbreak of giggles and flips the slide again.

“For example,” he says, pointing to a Shutterstock photo of a guy’s back in the middle of the street, “say you’re walking down the street with plastic groceries in hand. One of them holds a milk jug, but because you were in a hurry to get to a doctor’s appointment, you only have one plastic bag around the jug.

“Then your bag snaps.” Next slide. Brief photo of a shredded bag and a sad face. Shiro turns from the screen to face his students gravely. “The milk explodes all over the only clean pair of pants you have for that week. And you have no milk. You run to the washroom to wipe your pants clean, but the water is contaminated because there’s an epidemic in your city.”

Slide three. Zombie shot. Someone screams. Shiro moves on.

“Now you’re officially late to your doctor’s appointment,” he says. “You run to your car, get in, and drive to the hospital. But you’re too late and you missed your appointment. You can’t schedule another appointment for three months. By then, it’s too late, and you’ve already progressed too far in your lung cancer that was sped up by your excessive chain smoking, caused by the stress of the fact that you have no milk and no clean water to drink because you relied on milk too much.” Slide four: a pack of Marlboro’s, contaminated brown water, and another Shutterstock photo of a disappointed doctor burying his face in his hands.

Shiro lets that image sink in for a moment, then slide five, the kicker: gravestone. Everyone goes quiet.

“Now you’re dead three months later,” Shiro says calmly, “because your plastic bag carrying your milk snapped. Milk led to your death. That’s Murphy’s Law.”

A kid whose name Shiro can’t recall—something like Devin, or Kevin, or Pevin—raises his hand. “Uh, sir?”

Shiro waves Devin-Kevin-Pevin down. “I’ve told you, Shiro’s fine. What is it?”

“...What… What’s any of this got to do with physics?”

“Oh, well, it’s commonly used within the scientific community as a warning to leave no room for error in your experiments, but it can apply to other things outside of science, too.”

“Like… death by milk?”

“Or taxi cabs and misplaced optimism.”

“What—?”

“Moving along!”

* * *

Lance doesn’t particularly like stew.

It takes too long, and the meat always seems a little dry despite the gallon of gravy it soaks in—or maybe that’s just an ode to the quality of protein, but that’s the _point_ of stew isn’t it? To soften up shitty meat? Whatever. Maybe it’s just the fact that his mother liked to put in a fuckton of oregano and that shit is _pungent_ , and he’s had enough of herbs being stuck between his teeth to last a lifetime.

Okay, maybe it’s more to do with the fact that he’s consumed so much stew since he had teeth to chew that he’s a bit tired of it.

Regardless of the reasoning, Lance still doesn’t particularly like stew.

Basically, what it comes down to is that Lance, while not a purveyor of stew, is currently stewing. Maybe it has something to do with the dream he can no longer recall, but Lance wakes to irritation spiking in his veins and no idea _why_.

He doesn’t get the chance to think anymore about it because he realizes he slapped snooze on his phone four times, and is now late for class.

Waking up late with the vestiges of a sour dream simmering at the back of his mind isn’t a good start to the day. Of course, it doesn’t get any better when he’s forced to dive into a nearby building to avoid the wrath of a Certain Photographer, but he finally makes it to class, a large coffee in hand, and knocks delicately at the back door. Those in the back row obstinately ignore him until he gives the door an irate kick and Thace asks someone to _please let him in before he drills a hole through the door with his shoe_.

And—because such is the theme of the day—Lance sits down in the only available seat on his half of the auditorium, sets his cup on the desk, and the asshole beside him—who, upon later reflection, honestly did nothing wrong except for existing in that moment—pulls his charger cord out from under Lance’s cup of coffee.

The burning liquid miraculously misses all forms of technology to instead soak the entirety of Lance’s lap. With a strangled sound that does _not_ go unnoticed, Lance ups and leaves.

So he has a shitty dream, wakes up late for class, and can’t even enjoy the large coffee he got himself or his jeans that he _knows_ makes his butt look especially nice, and unlike Shiro’s proverbial jug of milk, he can’t even blame it on anything tangible. Murphy’s Law is a piece of _shit,_ and Edward Murphy is a far, estranged man.

But Lance is a man of optimism and sunshine if anything, so he grits his teeth and wipes off the coffee as best he can in the bathroom and ties his hoodie around his waist to hide the coffee stains. Like nothing even happened.

Boom.

Optimism.

He goes back to class, and other than not understanding a single word that comes out of Thace’s mouth—because _screw_ physics and _screw_ dyslexia and _screw_ the fact that he ever mixed up physics and psych for his science cred—the rest of the morning goes okay.

It’s certainly no _winning-a-bet-in-B-Mart_ or _receiving-the-blessed-tidings-of-Her-Beautiful-Lordship_ day, but it’s decent. It’s fine.

Up until he goes to shop for groceries after school and his car breaks down.

And because he has no duct tape in his backseat—forcibly taken for a physics project—he can’t tape the engine back together like he usually does, which means he has to tow it to an actual shop.

Again, the optimist. The optimist in him says it’s a good thing because at least he didn’t waste much gas to realize he only has Macklemore Dollars in his pocket (i.e. twenty) and leave the grocery store with nothing.

But that means he has to use Macklemore Dollars to pay for a tow truck and _not_ the holy Chipotle he was looking forward to all afternoon.

Optimist. Optimist. At least the car broke now instead of later, like going to a doctor’s appointment and missing it and dying of lung cancer.

“My milk is still okay,” Lance says to himself, and ignores the weird look the tow truck guy gives him.

They arrive at the shop with minimal trouble. It’s at this point that Lance, consumed by the internal monologue that repeats _optimist_ and _lactose-positive_ in increasingly creative ways, remembers Steven.

Or rather, he remembers when he steps into the shop, sees Ezor, looks over her shoulder, and sees Keith. _Steven_. Whatever. The point is, the milk he convinced himself was okay is now metaphorically curdling in his stomach, intent on forcing Lance’s family to scratch “Death by Cheese” on his tombstone, all because he happened to forget that Steven/Keith/ _whatever_ actually works here.

“Fuck me,” he says outloud to Ezor and the tow truck driver, who both stare at him, the former with a smile like a razor blade that turns the feta in Lance’s tum blue.

And Lance, because he’s a bundle of organic tissue comprised of the element of Regret, marches outside, around the corner and into the garage. He doesn’t notice—okay, he _does_ , but he’s choosing to ignore—Ezor leaning in the employee’s doorway to witness.

“ _What_ do you think you’re doing?” he snaps just as Steven props up the hood and stares down at all the duct tape.

“What the fuck,” says Steven. He looks up, registers Lance talking to him, and repeats, “What the _fuck_.”

“I _said_ —” begins Lance.

“Of course you’d be the asshole that tapes his car’s engine together,” Steven cuts in, looking back down at the engine with his brow drawn. “Amazing. I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“I—hold on. _Asshole?_ ”

“Yes,” Steven says. “Who the hell duct tapes their engine into functionality?”

“It’s worked, okay!”

Steven pulls off a particularly disgusting piece of tape—what was originally grey is now swinging like a limp dick with some black… _substance_ —and throws it to the ground, where it lands with a loud _splat._ He stares at it, then at Lance, and the worst fucking part is his expression doesn’t change between the two.

“Yeah,” Steven-Keith says blankly. “Totally worked.”

Heat burns in Lance’s cheeks. “Listen,” he starts.

Keith fans the engine and leans into the car, and because today is not a _winning-a-bet-in-B-Mart_ or _receiving-the-blessed-tidings-of-Her-Beautiful-Lordship_ day, his shirt rides up to reveal a sliver of pale, toned stomach, and the cheese curdles in a decisively not heterosexual way. Shit. _Shit._ Not now, gay thoughts.

“You gonna tell me to shut up again?” Keith asks. “Like you did a couple weeks ago?”

“No,” Lance says, and exhales. “I won’t. I was just gonna say that when you don’t even have Macklemore Dollars in your pocket anymore, duct taping your engine is a shitty way to fix your shitty car, but it’s the only shitty, cheap way you have.”

Keith purses his lips and looks back at him. “So why didn’t you do it this time too?”

“Because I had no duct tape. And the engine crashed before I could get any. And I spent my Macklemore Dollars to pay for the tow truck to get here.”

“Holy hell,” Keith mutters. “You realize there’s a student discount if you let me do it?”

Lance squints at him. “How much?”

“Seventy-five.”

“You… you mean seventy-five dollars off. Three and a half Macklemore Dollars. Right?”

“No,” says Keith. “Seventy-five percent off the whole job.”

“ _Fuck me,”_ Lance wheezes. _“What the shit.”_

“It won’t be a permanent fix,” Keith goes on, like he hasn’t just saved Lance from living on the streets for a month, “but it’ll do the job for a while. Maybe like… three or four months? Your car’s shit, man, so there’s only so much I can do.”

Three or four months without repairs. Lance hasn’t gone two weeks without emergency duct tape since getting this car.

“I need a moment.” He puts a hand against the frame of his car and leans. The metal groans and he immediately snatches his hand away. “Moment had. You swear you’re not shitting me right now?”

Keith cocks his hip and arches an eyebrow. “Dude, this is my _job_.”

“Oh, right.” Lance looks down at his shoddy engine as guilt starts trickling in amongst the incredulity and relief. “Right. I-I’m, uh, sorry.”

“S’fine,” says Keith, tugging on his gloves— _sweet Shiro—_ and reaching into the engine to pull away another strip of duct tape.

Lance shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. “I mean, about before too.”

“Before?”

“The… studying thing.”

“Ah.” Keith doesn’t sound convinced.

“You helped me out and I was a dick about it,” says Lance, forcing out every word while trying to maintain his dignity. “So I’m sorry. And thanks. Again.”

“Ah,” Keith says again. A short pause. “Ah. That’s. Yeah.”

Lance blinks slowly.

“Yeah,” he says finally, looking down at the engine. “Sure thing. And, uh, I’m sorry too. About your handwriting thing. It’s not a knock-off Mona Lisa.”

Lance feels his face spasm. It takes him a second to realize it’s because his mouth is trying to smile. Thankfully Keith is seemingly focused on the mess of metal and tape and doesn’t take notice of Lance’s facial journey. From the doorway, Lance sees Ezor beaming at him.

The moment they lock eyes, she slowly mouths _you’re so gay_. Hot pressure fills Lance’s face. Or rather his entire head. His skull is a hot air balloon.

“Thanks,” Lance squeaks, trying and failing to look at Keith. “I’m—gonna—go.”

Keith starts to lift his head and Lance pivots on his foot before he can see his expression. “O—kay. I’ll… see you around?”

“Yep,” peeps Lance as he skidaddles straight out of the garage.

So it’s not a _winning-a-bet-in-B-Mart_ or _receiving-the-blessed-tidings-of-Her-Beautiful-Lordship_ day, but as far as mortal luck and blessings go, it’s pretty damn close.

* * *

Me [6:00 PM]:  
hi allura

Allura [6:05 PM]:  
Hello, who is this?

Me [6:06 PM]:  
tis kieth  
its  
keith  
th photo sshoot guy  
shros brother  
shiros

Allura [6:09 PM]:  
Of course I remember you!  
What did you need?

Me [6:10 PM]:  
abt the photo shoot

Allura [6:11 PM]:  
Have you decided?

Me [6:17 PM]:  
y  
ea  
ill do it  
txt me when lance is free

Allura [6:17 PM]:  
I’ll need him to agree first, but I’ll do that as soon as I can  
Thank you, Keith

Me [6:20 PM]:  
yeah sure  
see you

 

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like there should be other "alternate universe -" options for...stories like this.  
> alternate universe - what the shit is going on  
> alternate universe - is this really america  
> alternate universe - fantasy but only in that none of this is realistic  
> if y'all have ideas......lay em on me.........
> 
> my tumblr is at bitterbeetle and yui’s at yuisaki-drabbles so hit us up!


End file.
